Top 5 Concerts in Metro Phoenix This Weekend

Hear that? It's the clock counting down the hours until your weekend begins and it's nearing the magic moment known as quitting time. To help the time pass more quickly, you might consider what it is you'll actually be doing during the next couple days and nights of work-free bliss.

Luckily, if you're in the mood to get in a live show or two, there are more than a few options to choose from over the next 72 hours (eyeball our extensive online concert calendar for proof of such). And then there are our choices for the must-see shows this weekend.

The Chainsmokers - Friday, February 28 - Maya Day and Nightclub

If you've spent anytime on Facebook recently, it's a strong possibility that any of the EDM fans, club kids, or party-monster millennials on your friends list have dropped a link in their respective newsfeeds to "#SELFIE" by The Chainsmokers, probably with comments along the lines of "ZOMG! This is soooo funny!" It shouldn't come as any surprise, given that the recently released track is not only an addicting four minutes of electro-filled dance-pop ear candy, it's also one of those song that both pokes fun at an Internet subculture (in this case, the vapidity of selfies) while simultaneously celebrating the practice.

It's also, as your aforementioned Facebook friends have ascribed, quite hilarious and has served to propel The Chainsmokers into their current status of being EDM's resident "it" act of the nanosecond. The NYC duo of DJ/producers Alex Pall and Andrew Taggart have gotten shout-outs from the likes of Rolling Stone as an up-and-coming act to watch, not to mention more than more than a million YouTube views for "#SELFIE" since its release on Dim Mak late last month. Suffice it to say, you can expect a big crowd, who will probably engage in mass selfies, when The Chainsmokers come to Maya on Friday.

Agent Orange - Friday, February 28 - Club Red Part of that great wave of Southern California punk of the late '70s and early '80s, Agent Orange made great contributions to both the development of hardcore and modern surf rock. "Bloodstains," a song on its 1979 debut EP, championed early on by KROQ's Rodney Bingenheimer, has become a bit of a staple in punk circles.

Rather than discovering one sound and sticking solely to that aesthetic, Agent Orange has made songs like "Fire in the Rain" that were too edgy to be pop and too poppy for certain punk purists, and in the late '80s the band fully explored fusing punk with surf, with Sam Bolle going on to play in Dick Dale's band.

Orbweaver - Saturday, March 1 - Yucca Tap Room

Given how the tropes of Satan, darkness and destruction have been run into the ground, the number of metal bands that have a truly terrifying sound is dwindling. Miami quartet Orbweaver remain part of that exclusive club. Their brand of schizophrenic death metal plays like the soundtrack to an intense psychedelic trip that ultimately takes a turn toward the demonic.

Lead guitarist Sally Gates steers the band through hypnotic arrangements equally packed with sludgy heaviness and off-kilter time signatures. Just as you begin to get comfortable and lose yourself in the otherworldly riffs, vocalist Randy Piro begins screaming maniacally about how the cosmic spaceship is doomed, and if you don't launch the escape pod in time, you'll get lost in the trip forever ... or something like that. The title of their 2013 release, Strange Transmissions From the Neuralnomicon, is surprisingly appropriate. -- Jason Roche

Vial of Sound - Sunday, March 1 - Crescent Ballroom

We're living in the golden age of musical fetishism. Call it the byproduct of Jack White's obsessively vinyl/analog warpath or call it resistance to the way digital distribution has dehumanized the musical process. Whatever the cause, it's never been more fashionable to covet "old school" objects: records, hi-fi equipment, cassettes.

In the case of Josh Gooday and David Owens, the duo comprising synth-pop band Vial of Sound, what started as a hobby in law school bloomed into a full-blown obsession: The two create and perform their music with vintage analog synthesizers. Unlike so much retro stuff, synths aren't the sort of thing you can pick up at the mall or Urban Outfitters.

But it quickly became more. As other connoisseurs of vintage synths Com Truise and Tycho have said, collecting these instruments can get addicting. Once you start, Gooday explains, you don't want to taint the sound with even a little digital. Before long, Gooday was blowing his college funds on synthesizers.

"In my old band, I played drums and keys, a digital keyboard," Gooday says. But the lure of thick and warm sounds drew him in. "When you read on the Internet all the hype, analog sounds better, punchier." -- Troy Farah

Com Truise - Sunday, March 2 - Crescent Ballroom

As Com Truise, east coaster Seth Haley struggles with something resembling a gear fetish, owning close to 15 vintage synthesizers. Naturally, his instrumental monsters stem from some of the most influential '80s New Wave acts, from New Order to Berlin to Depeche Mode, but his grip on EDM, self-described as "mid-fi synth-wave, slow-motion funk" has made him a perceptive addition to Ghostly International's label.

Besides penning masterful mindfucks like Galactic Melt and In Decay, Truise has remixed Foster the People, Neon Indian and his doctored Daft Punk track made it on the Tron: Legacy Reconfigured soundtrack. Not surprisingly, Truise is pretty interested in scoring a film, but doesn't really have any directors in mind.

"I'm trying to think of a project based thing, regardless of who's really doing it," Truise says over the phone. "I just think my music would be a separate part of it."

Truise's ideal film would concern the 1959 Dyatlov Pass Incident, when nine hikers were brutally killed by a "compelling unknown force" deep in the mountains of Russia. Their clothes were highly radioactive when tested and despite showing no signs of struggle, two victims had fractured skulls, two had broken ribs and another was missing her tongue. According to Russian scientists, the force to cause these particular injuries would rival a car crash. Some people blame UFOs, others blame the Soviets, but the cause of death is a mystery. -- Troy Farah

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